Abstract:

One hundred twenty African-American and Euro-American married individuals were asked to complete inventories measuring marital distress, dysfunctional beliefs about marital relationships, and socioeconomic status (SES). It was hypothesized there would be a negative relationship between the dysfunctional beliefs that married individuals held and their level of marital satisfaction; there would be no significant difference between the dysfunctional beliefs that married individuals held across gender and race; and finally, the dysfunctional beliefs of married individuals would provide a better prediction of marital satisfaction than SES, gender, age, or race.Results indicate that Disagreement is destructive (D), Mindreading is expected (M), Partners cannot change (C), Sexual perfectionism is a must (S), and The sexes are dramatically different (MF) each obtained a statistically significant negative association with marital satisfaction. Examining the relationship between gender and marital satisfaction, males reported higher levels of marital satisfaction than females. Furthermore, statistically significant differences were obtained for gender but not for race when considering all five dysfunctional marital beliefs simultaneously. Finally, the various factors considered in this study accounted for 30% of the variance in marital satisfaction.